Michael A. De Leon is a graphic designer by day, but wears many hats in his off time. In 2004, after several years of covering the Spurs, he started Project Spurs, a Spurs team fansite as an outlet to provide content to Spurs fans, while continuing to write for himself and learning the ins and outs of online publishing and web design. He has since built a writing team and started a popular weekly Spurs podcast called the Spurscast.

Note: This is an mySA.com City Brights Blog. These blogs are not written or edited by mySA or the San Antonio Express-News. The authors are solely responsible for the content.

Assembling Bruise Brothers 2.0

In late August, I wrote a feature about a band of former Spurs big men that formed the Bruise Brothers while they played in San Antonio under Stan Albeck.

As I said then, the Spurs were always known to be like the current Phoenix Suns, a high-scoring, up-tempo team. That is until the the Bruise Brothers came along.

Since then, the Spurs have had some great bigs, most notably Artis Gilmore, David Robinson and Tim Duncan.

But this year’s Spurs team is probably the closest to resemble the original Bruise Brothers. The major difference is that this new version of the Bruise Brother is made up of four players, not six.

Tim Duncan

In trying to compare both groups, there really was no member that could stand up to Tim Duncan. You could say he is similar to Mark Olberding because Olberding spent most of his career here, but when looking purely at statistics, none of the original Bruise Brothers compare in their primes to Duncan.

Duncan has been a double-double machine throughout his NBA career. Even this season, when a lot of critics said Duncan was washed up, he is averaging 19 points, 10 rebounds and two blocks per game.

So while Duncan may not have the tough exterior that some of the Bruise Brothers had, ask his opponents how they feel after going 48 minutes with him.

Antonio McDyess

McDyess is the Paul Griffin of this group. Griffin was known as an undersized big man, who was known for mixing it up inside, rebounding and getting hustle points. The biggest difference, at least so far is that McDyess is a starter and does not come off the bench.

McDyess is also an undersized 6-9 at center, but that doesn’t stop him from guarding some of the league’s best bigs on a nightly basis. While he’s averaged 6 points and 5.6 rebounds per game, he’s also only averaging 21 minutes per game and it’s also important to note that McDyess is one of seven new players on this year’s Spurs roster.

His biggest game of the year came against Houston. McDyess totaled 15 points, 14 rebounds, two steals and one blocked shot, very Bruise Brothers-esque numbers.

Theo Ratliff

When I started looking through the original Bruise Brothers and I came across George “Mr. Swat” Johnson, I knew exactly which current Spur fit that role. Ratliff has made a career out of obliterating shot attempts.